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NOTHING LIKE HONORING THE BOSS, ESPECIALLY IF HE'S THE GOVERONOR

Submitted by Roldo on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 15:36.

Happened to look at Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher’s official site and it made me wonder why Peggy Zone Fisher’s profile and photo are linked there. Did we elect Lee’s wife, too? I don’t think so. That made me think a bit more after I was told some rather high-faulting ticket prices were being asked for the annual fund-raising dinner for Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio. So I look at the Diversity Center and learn its director is none other than Peggy Zone Fisher. Guess who’s the Diversity honoree of the year? Now, come on, think. Well, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher’s wife heads it so, of course, it’s his boss – Gov. Ted Strickland and, to be nice to the boss’s wife, his wife, First Lady Frances Strickland. They are honorees of the non-profit run by Fisher’s wife. Also, of course, since it’s Cleveland, there has to be an honoree from the Cleveland Clinic, this being a Company Town. So Clinic boss Delos Cosgrove joins the governor and his wife as a third honoree. Tickets to this dinner (tonight) go for as high as $25,000 for Leadership. You get 10 dinner tickets at this level and photo ops. Individual tickets are $300 to $500 and “Friends” tickets are $1,500 with certain other opportunities. Well, it all helps pay Peggy Zone Fisher’s $118,000 pay package at the Diversity Center. Not bad. Not bad at all. Of course, that’s nothing to the non-profit job held by Lee before he became Lt. Gov. He pulled down $382,000 a year at the Center for Families and Children. So family income has had to drop at the Fishers. This should be a lesson to Commissioners Dimora and Russo that there are easier ways to plan for your financial future. You don’t have to soil your hands. By the way, the Diversity Center in its past life under another name had a lot of lovely people as honorees: Ralph Besse of CEI; Tom Patton of Republic Steel; Tom Vail of the Pee Dee; E. Mandell de Windt of Eaton Corp.; Paul Briggs, Cleveland school superintendent; Art Modell of the Browns; Charlie Spahr of Sohio. Oh, most people might not recognize some of these names but be assured from someone who has watched elites play around this city for a long time, you wouldn’t go far to pay any honor to them.

We are all human and capable of misplacing our priorities in life, but how/when did our local leaders lose sight of the greater community and greater good? These people are not BAD people. Many of us know them, and know the next generation of idols being groomed for leadership (Ronayne, Rokakis, Nance). How do we keep them from becoming fallen idols?

And, who is really behind the promotion of NEO's false idols?

(Is Dan Moore too much of an outsider/reformer to become a local leader? You say: Do you see one corporate leader who will speak out and say what’s obvious or should be to anyone watching this community?
They're too interested in maybe getting a crumb themselves some day.
So don't talk about Cleveland Leadership without keeping in mind that civic responsibility doesn’t even exist in Cleveland, once the most progressive city in America, according to Lincoln Steffens. He knew.
So, just as now we are finding that there were no corporate whistleblowers to warn against the financial calamity facing us nationally, there are absolutely no voices or whistleblowers locally as Cleveland continues to sink into its quicksand).